Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
a client of mine is looking to buy a yellowpages online ad for the link. The links are redirects and look like this:
http://www.yellowpages.com/sp/yellowpages/ypout.jsp?linkType=6
&outURL=http%3A//example.com&impressionId=1
&listingId=1234567&searchId=1&id=9876543
I told the client that these wouldnt help him since they are not direct links, he insists they will. Although i probably shouldnt be questioning myself does anyone here have a definitive answer? Thanks in advance.
[edited by: tedster at 3:38 pm (utc) on June 20, 2007]
[edit reason] de-link the URL, fix side-scroll [/edit]
Yahoo used to cloak their directory listings to Google to pass clean links and PR but run their redirect script for everyone else.
Using an http checker with Googlebot as the user-agent will tell you if Yell do the same. My guess is not.
A Yell rep told me that their 'local' results (used in Google in the UK) were rotated so if I bought a listing I'd see some time in the top 3 slots that make it into Google above the 1st place listing. Lies! They are fixed - if you are 4th then you will only be seen in Google if someone above you doesn't renew.
Tell your friend not to trust what they say.
<a href="http://www.example.com/cgi-bin/links/jump.cgi?ID=1470" target="_blank">http://www.example2.com/</a>
example.com being my site and example2.com being the site I link to.
They may, however, try to spider the apparent URL - they will spider anything that looks remotely like a URL. That doesn't mean they give it backlink juice, however - just that they might chekc to see if it's a URL they haven't already got.
I've seen such redirects ( /fakelink.cgi?suckerid=1234 ) in both Google and Yahoo first crawled, then their redirect count as backlinks, passing PR and relevance...
But as most of such redirect-URLs are robots.txt'd down from the face of the Earth, I wouldn't be holding my breath for it to pass anything.
It's the get relevant links from great directories syndrome. Many of the "great directories" are also obeying the don't sell links / get into suspicion of selling links doctrine as well and are offering these non-link links instead. ( In fear of being filtered out otherwise, which usually happends to directories. )
...
...
I know, there's a lot of fine places, I have a list of OK directories myself.
But if I look at which of these rank for the keywords I target, it's usually the ones that have no OBLs and walk a tight line in between a PR sink and an "authority" site.
The ones that provide the best links usually don't really send much traffic, while the ones with such redirects are "popular" enough to actually send some interested people.
The SERPs aren't exactly in line with what I'd call editorial quality, but whatever. I just submit to both types... the only problem is that it takes twice as much effort. Soon enough there won't be such a thing as a "lazy SEO/SEM".
edited: although I'd need to check if that's still the case, for this update seems to prefer a list of related links better than the actual sites with content, so older, I mean old fashioned directories may have regained some of their glory.
[edited by: Miamacs at 10:30 am (utc) on June 22, 2007]
The ones that provide the best links usually don't really send much traffic, while the ones with such redirects are "popular" enough to actually send some interested people.
